landscapes Untitled

I would appreciate your critique

I would change two things in the composition: 1) get the rock of of the extreme corner; it needs to be a bit higher and a bit more toward the center (about one width of the rock along the diagonal); 2) the amount of blue sky above the yellow and orange should be reduced; this is empty space that's not contributing much.... I'd crop just as the orange is hitting the top on the left.

 

It's a peaceful, timeless image.

Stephen,

 

Thank you for your advice. Let's see if the crop has helped.

 

Best regards,

 

M. Ts.

Mikhail, that's where I might crop the top, but I really think you also need the rock. It's probably not possible from this image, and I know you were stretching it to get the great sky. The only solution here would have been to walk a fair distance to the right, and that may not have been possible. Some of the "rules" are around for a reason, and the rule of thirds often has merit, as I think it does in this photo regarding the placement of the rock. It's something to keep in mind next time.

Hope you don't mind, but this is a very quick and alteration with much more fine-tuning required; it just shows my thoughts on the composition.

Stephen,

 

Many thanks. I misunderstood what you said about the rock -- I am glad we both agree that it has a place, and I like your placement better. I think I could have moved a bit to the right to get the rock closer to the center. But when I drove up the mountain, I nearly got blown off the cliff by the wind.

 

I admire your art greatly, and very grateful for your advice. I will try to crop it anew and se what happens.

 

Best regards,

 

M. Ts.

Stephen, my Photoshop skills aren't good enough to move the rock (it would be faster for me to drive up to the same place and photograph it again -- it's about 25 minutes form where I live), but I have another shot which is closer to what you've kindly suggested. Please, have a look.

 

Many thanks and best regards,

 

M. Ts.

Mikhail, I think your second image is better than the one with the rock in the corner. But now there is a new problem (and which I now just barely see on the original), and that is vegetation poking up into the bottom of the image. That''s probably why you placed the rock so close to the bottom edge. Small pieces of vegetation poking into the image like that are definitely not good. They would be relatively easy to clone out with photoshop, if you're not adverse to doing that with your images. The only natural way to do it would be to find a higher point of land from which to photograph down onto the scene.

 

Some others on PN are getting some interesting images by waiting until the sun has set much further (to the point that it is getting dark, using a 3-stop hard edged graduated neutral density filter to cover the sky, and making exposures of several minutes. The water becomes very smooth, and any clouds that are in the sky become very soft because of their movement. I've also done this by using an extremely dark ND filter (so dark that I first have to compose and focus, then put on the filter). I can get an exposure of 4 minutes at ISO 100 and f22, even when the sun is still in the sky. Leigh Perry, Mike Stacey, and Kurt Nielsen are three that I know of who have done some neat things with a setting like you have here.

 

Some of the shots that I've done with these long exposures are in my "marine shorelines" folder. This is my favorite:

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=5650089

Stephen,

 

Again, many thanks for your observations and advice. I may try to photoshop the vegetation away -- this is not too difficult. The technique you suggest requires something I may invest in the future -- a tripod and some new filters. At this point, I only have a graduated ND filter, and have just ordered a circular polarizer, and I can't say that my first attempts of using the graduated ND have been very successful. (The sky without the filer looked better than with one -- but there was no real reason to use the filter, since the difference between the dark and bright part of the landscape was only two stops.) I am not sure thaat I would dare put a camera on a tripod at this spot in Big Sur -- the winds are ferocious there. And thanks for the link to you photographs -- I often enjoy looking at them. I also would like to learn to photographs forests -- I love forests, and my first visit to the Humboldt State Park was a very profound experience for me, but photographing forests is tricky.

 

Thanks,

 

M. Ts.

My best advice for forests: cloudy conditions. It's almost impossible when the sun is streaking through the branches (way too much contrast).

Stephen, thank you.

 

M. Ts.